Aug
14
Fear of the Lord: where does it go?
Filed Under Bible, Christian Living, Holiness, Proverbs | Leave a Comment
Where does the fear of the Lord take us? What is its orientation? Proverbs maps it out for us: Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD, and turn away from evil [3:7]. The fear of the LORD is hatred of evil. Pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate [8:13]. By steadfast love and faithfulness iniquity is atoned for,
and by the fear of the LORD one turns away from evil [16:6]. Let not your heart envy sinners, but continue in the fear of the LORD all the day. Surely there is a future, and your hope will not be cut off [23:17-18].
The fool has no fear of God before his eyes [Psalm 36:1]. He lives for what this moment can deliver and for what his eyes can see.
Fearing God has a lot to do with what we love and hate, i.e., our affections. In fearing the Lord we love what he loves, we hate what he hates. We are happiest when we are pleasing him. Fear of the Lord is the internal motivator of the wise person. God, his presence, his will, and his glory drive him to do what he does. He does not live for his own momentary pleasure or for what he can possess. He does what he does because God has spoken—not because someone is watching, or out of fear of the consequences, but out of a deep, worshipful love and reverence for God. The thought of knowingly and purposefully disobeying God is unthinkable.
Why are you doing what you are doing? What you really are is what you are when no one else is watching. What will keep you faithful, loving and obedient in times of temptation when no ‘authority’ is watching and when the pressure is on to step outside of God’s boundaries?
Aug
9
Fear of the Lord: what is it?
Filed Under Bible, Christian Living, Holiness, Proverbs | Leave a Comment
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge;
fools despise wisdom and instruction. [Proverbs 1:7; 9:10]
The fear of the LORD is the principal part, the primary ingredient of godliness, the foundation of spiritual life. It is a comprehensive term for the way we live the Christian life—not just what we say, not just the activities we are involved in, but the way we act, feel, and live.
It is something more than FEAR + LORD. It not the fear that paralyzed the wicked and lazy servant in Jesus’ parable in Matthew 25:24-25); rather, it is the attitude of a loving child toward his father.
The fear of the LORD is instruction in wisdom, and humility comes before honor [Proverbs 15:33]. The proverb draws a parallel between the fear of the LORD and humility. You know humility, right? Paying close attention to who God is and what he does, not thinking more highly of ourselves than we ought–rather, forgetting ourselves in our love for God and others. This arises from the depth of mercy shown to us in the Gospel (see Jeremiah 32:39-40 and Psalm 130:4). I think it is Eugene Peterson who describes humility as becoming absorbed in what God has been doing and the way he continues doing it by his Son Jesus and by the Holy Spirit. Humility involves reckoning with a holy God at every moment in reverent responsiveness.
Here are some powerful lines from Frederick W. Faber about the fear of the Lord:
My fear of Thee, O Lord, exults
Like life within my veins,
A fear which rightly claims to be
One of love’s sacred pains.Thy goodness to Thy saints of old
An awful thing appeared;
For were Thy majesty less good
Much less would it be feared.There is no joy the soul can meet
Upon life’s various road
Like the sweet fear that sits and shrinks
Under the eye of God.A special joy is in all love
For objects we revere;
Thus joy in God will always be
Proportioned to our fear.Oh Thou art greatly to be feared,
Thou art so prompt to bless!
The dread to miss such love as Thine
Makes fear but love’s excess.The fulness of Thy mercy seems
To fill both land and sea;
If we can break through bounds so vast,
How exiled shall we be!For grace is fearful, which each hour
Our path in life has crossed;
If it were rarer, it might be
Less easy to be lost.But fear is love, and love is fear,
And in and out they move;
But fear is an intenser joy
Than mere unfrightened love.When most I fear Thee, Lord! then most
Familiar I appear;
And I am in my soul most free,
When I am most in fear.I should not love Thee as I do,
If love might make more free;
Its very sweetness would be lost
In greater liberty.I feel Thee most a father, when
I fancy Thee most near:
And Thou comest not so nigh in love
As Thou comest, Lord! in fear.They love Thee little, if at all,
Who do not fear Thee much;
If love is Thine attraction, Lord!
Fear is Thy very touch.Love could not love Thee half so much
If it found Thee not so near;
It is Thy nearness, which makes love
The perfectness of fear.We fear because Thou art so good,
And because we can sin;
And when we make most show of love,
We are trembling most within.And, Father! when to us in heaven
Thou shalt Thy Face unveil,
Then more than ever will our souls
Before Thy goodness quail.Our blessedness will be to bear
The sight of Thee so near,
And thus eternal love will be
But the ecstasy of fear.
May
15
Crimes Against the Future
Filed Under Bible, Culture | Leave a Comment
Amos 1:13 “Thus says the LORD: ‘For three transgressions of the Ammonites, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment, because they have ripped open pregnant women in Gilead, that they might enlarge their border.’” (ESV)
The sermon I preached two weeks ago included this statement of God’s wrath against the Ammonites. In this section of judgment upon Israel’s neighbors there are different sins epitomized by each of the six nations mentioned. What was the sin of the Ammonites? It was waging a particular war on the unborn. It is presumed that the Ammonites were not strong enough to wage war against Israel in open battle and so they decided to wage war against Israel’s pregnant women. This focused assault would not destroy Israel immediately but would certainly diminish her population over time.
But when we see this prophecy against the Ammonites paired against the sin of the Moabites which follows we get a clearer view of what was going on. The Moabites had burned to lime the body of a dead king of Edom. What is the big deal with burning a dead king? It was an offense against the past and tradition of the Edomites. It was a tremendously heinous thing to desecrate the dead, as evidenced by other passages of Scripture as well. When we put the Moabites next to the Ammonites, both of whom are the result of Lot’s incest with his daughters, we see one waging a war against the future and one waging a war against the past.
But why were the Ammonites waging this war against the unborn, against the future? In order, “that they might enlarge their border.” It was financial and political prosperity that they sought. They were willing to wage a war against one of the most sacred of societal emblems, a mother with child, in order that they as a people might prosper. They had chosen prosperity over human dignity. They had chosen riches over godliness.
We certainly see direct correlations here to abortion in our day. Our nation sees unborn children as expendable for the sake of future prosperity and comfort. Through the increase of prenatal testing and the availability of abortion providers, we are seeing an increase in the number of “undesirable traits” that constitute a reason for abortion. We are not far from seeing abortions allowed or suggested for such traits as gender, perceived intellect, or cosmetic attributes such as blue eyes or blond hair.
All of this is intended to be preface to get you to read Dr. Al Mohler’s blog post for today, Sliding Fast Down the Slippery Slope. His critique is much more thorough and insightful than mine. Read it and do what you can in prayer, conversations, and political action to see the practice of abortion outlawed in our country.
May
8
Tomb of Herod the Great found?
Filed Under Bible, Christian History, Christmas | Leave a Comment
According to Haaretz.com, archaeologists from Hebrew University in Jerusalem have discovered the tomb site of Herod the Great–the Herod whom Rome allowed to ‘rule’ the province of Judaea from 74 BC to ~4 BC. This is the same Herod who appears in Matthew and Luke’s narratives of the birth of Jesus and instigator of the infant massacre at Bethlehem. Herod the Great is also famous for his ambitious expansion of the Temple in Jerusalem.
As for the tomb discovery, Professor Ehud Netzer has been digging since 1972 around a site known as Herodium, about 7 miles outside of Jerusalem and destroyed by the Romans in AD 71, acting on the belief that first-century Jewish historian Josephus was reliable in his detailed account of the funeral and burial of Herod. But it was not until this spring that his team found the ruins of a distinctively lavish (albeit empty) sarcophagus at Herodium.
Two additional interesting notes about Herod the Great:
- His ancestors were Edomites and not Jews. In his grandfather’s time, the Maccabeans conquered Idumea (home of the remnant of the Edomites) and compelled them to convert to Judaism. Although Herod surely would have seen himself as Jewish, conservative, observant Jews in his day would likely have viewed him as more Hellenistic than Jewish.
- You might scratch your head at the fact that Herod’s death is listed as ~4 BC. But wasn’t Jesus born in 1 AD? Not so fast, my friend. Our current numbering system for years was adopted in Western Europe in 8th century and was based on work by a 6th century monk named Dionysus Exiguus, who lived in Rome. Dionysus miscalculated a few things, and our best guesses are that Jesus was born between 6 BC and 4 BC.
May
3
The Qur’an’s challenge to the Bible
Filed Under Apologetics, Bible, Evangelism, Islam, Missions | Leave a Comment
My most recent conversation with a Muslim took place a couple of months ago in Trujillo, Peru. My companions and I were in a cab at the Plaza de Armas on a Saturday afternoon and noticed two bearded Middle Eastern men in turbans rolling out their prayer rugs amidst the crowds. This stood out in Trujillo like it would in Kosciusko. After getting something to eat, we walked over to where the men were sitting after they had finished their prayers. We engaged in some discussion in English with these men, who said they were from Pakistan. They were soft-spoken, charitable and most eager to talk about their faith. They emphasized Islam’s regard for Jesus as a prophet, implying that Muhammed reformed and revived and reoriented the path of true religion that Abraham, Moses and Jesus had advocated. By then a small crowd was gathering, along with a few nervous-looking police officers. As I was about to ask them if the Qur’an teaches that Jesus was crucified and resurrected (it denies this, by the way), a young Peruvian man asked them in English why Muslims crashed the planes into the World Trade Center–and you can guess that the conversation steered way off course from that point, and we decided to leave the crowd to their wrangling and the police to break it up.
Adam S. Francisco, assistant professor of history at Concordia College in Bronxville, New York, has written a short introduction to some of the striking differences between Christianity and Islam that may help you learn the lay of the land a bit. The piece originally appeared in the March/April 2007 issue of Modern Reformation.
Apr
23
There is no plan B…
Filed Under Around the Church, Bible, Evangelism, Holiness, Justification, Men, The Church | Leave a Comment
Dr. Elliott Greene has been doing a marvelous job at FPC Kosciusko’s annual Bible Conference (look for mp3s of the sermons later this week at fpckosciusko.org), taking us through the book of Ephesians under the title ‘What the Church Would Be If She Knew What She Was.’ In introducing Dr. Greene on Friday evening I read for the second time an excerpt from Dr. Ligon Duncan’s introductory address at the recent Twin Lakes Fellowship. He had posted it on his blog. It sums up so much of the vision of what The Sweet Dropper is about and what FPC Kosciusko is about:
“What do we long to see come out of the Twin Lakes Fellowship?
“. . . a strong coalition of Bible-saturated, truth-driven, God-entranced, prayer-soaked, aggressively evangelistic, Christ-treasuring and exalting, Spirit-filled, sovereign grace-loving, missions-advancing, hell-robbing, strong-thinking, real-need-exposing, soul-winning, mind-engaging, vagueness-rejecting, wartime-life-style-pursuing, risk-taking, justice-advancing, Scripture-expounding, cross-cherishing, homosexuality-opposing, abortion-denouncing, racism-resisting, heaven-desiring, imputation-of-an-alien-righteousness-proclaiming, justification-by-faith-alone-apart-from-doing-preaching, error-exposing, complementarian, joyful, humble, loving, courageous, happy pastors working together for the Gospel. (Thanks to John Piper for many of these words and thoughts).
“And we want to see them leading strong evangelical churches who, while they hold as faithfully and biblically as they know how to certain doctrinal distinctives not shared by all other biblical evangelical churches, band together for the Gospel on a basis that is robustly doctrinal, historic, orthodox, reformational, world-opposing-while-at-the-same-time-world-serving, Bible-preaching, scriptural-theology-inculcating, real-conversion-prizing, deep biblical evangelism-practicing, New Testament church-membership-and-leadership-implementing, church-discipline-applying, healthy and growing Disciple-making – all for the display of God’s glory in the churches.
“May the Lord raise up such a ministerial fraternity – not on the basis of doctrinal minimalism but rather on the basis of shared conviction of the truth and Gospel forbearance in the areas where we differ; not to the detriment of our convictions regarding our distinctives in faith and practice in the local churches and families of churches we serve, but to their enhancement. And may the Lord raise up churches that are truly a witness to grace in this passing age, a display of the glory and power of God’s saving grace, outposts of heaven, suburbs of eternity. For the church is God’s strategy, and there is no plan B.”